General Anti-Avoidance Rules

General Anti-Avoidance Rules, the only book considering the rules from transnational, international, and EU perspectives, provides a specific and practical diagnosis of the General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAARs) by a comparison of rules in various countries, the normative evolution at international and European level, and the interpretation of these rules by the courts. Any recognition of the conflict between tax collection and taxpayers’ rights inevitably raises the thorny issue of tax avoidance. Battling tax avoidance has become one of the pillars of tax policy at every governmental level, and thus, an exhaustive analysis of the scope and implications of the new GAARs is urgently required.

The book offers an in-depth analysis of the following aspects:
- distinction between tax avoidance, tax evasion, tax planning, and aggressive tax planning;
lack of legal certainty due to proliferation of rules and imprecise concepts used to apply them;
- reversal of the burden of proof in many cases of potential tax avoidance;
national consequences of the paradigm shift that has taken place at the international level; and
- role of the principal purpose test (PPT) clause in the Multilateral Convention.

In its detailed analysis of the regulatory advances in the field of GAARs, the author offers cogent proposals that will pierce through the complexities and imprecisions of the GAARs. The issues and solutions addressed in this book will prove invaluable to tax practitioners, tax authorities, policymakers, courts, and academics, providing them with clarity, security, and greater certainty in the application of the GAARs.